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Robert Laurence Binyon - England
Work rating: Low

Shall we but turn from braggart pride
 Our race to cheapen and defame?
 Before the world to wail, to chide,
 And weakness as with vaunting claim?
 Ere the hour strikes, to abdicate
 The steadfast spirit that made us great,
 And rail with scolding tongues at fate?

 If England`s heritage indeed
 Be lost, be traded quite away
 For fatted sloth and fevered greed;
 If, inly rotting, we decay;
 Suffer we then what doom we must,
 But silent, as befits the dust
 Of them whose chastisement was just.

 But rather, England, rally thou
 Whatever breathes of faith that still
 Within thee keeps the undying vow
 And dedicates the constant will.
 For such yet lives, if not among
 The boasters, or the loud of tongue
 Who cry that England`s knell is rung.

 The faint of heart, the small of brain,
 In thee but their own image find:
 Beyond such thoughts as these contain
 A mightier Presence is enshrined.
 Nor meaner than their birthright grown
 Shall these thy latest sons be shown,
 So thou but use them for thine own.

 By those great spirits burning high
 In our home`s heaven, that shall be stars
 To shine, when all is history
 And rumour of old, idle wars;
 By all those hearts which proudly bled
 To make this rose of England red;
 The living, the triumphant dead;

 By all who suffered and stood fast
 That Freedom might the weak uphold,
 And in men`s ways of wreck and waste
 Justice her awful flower unfold;
 By all who out of grief and wrong
 In passion`s art of noble song
 Made Beauty to our speech belong;

 By those adventurous ones who went
 Forth overseas, and, self--exiled,
 Sought from far isle and continent
 Another England in the wild,
 For whom no drums beat, yet they fought
 Alone, in courage of a thought
 Which an unbounded future wrought;

 Yea, and yet more by those to--day
 Who toil and serve for naught of gain,
 That in thy purer glory they
 May melt their ardour and their pain;
 By these and by the faith of these,
 The faith that glorifies and frees,
 Thy lands call on thee, and thy seas.

 If thou hast sinned, shall we forsake
 Thee, or the less account us thine?
 Thy sores, thy shames on us we take.
 Flies not for us thy famed ensign?
 Be ours to cleanse and to atone;
 No man this burden bears alone;
 England, our best shall be thine own.

 Lift up thy cause into the light!
 Put all the factious lips to shame!
 Our loves, our faiths, our hopes unite
 And strike into a single flame!
 Whatever from without betide,
 O purify the soul of pride
 In us; thy slumbers cast aside;
 And of thy sons be justified!
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